Spring of junior year

Summer before senior year

Take LSAT exam (If necessary, this can wait until October of senior year, but if you choose that option, remember to register prior to the first week of fall semester.)

October or November, senior year

Send in applications to schools of your choice (based on perusal of Official Guide and its admission prediction grids).

Have LSAC reports sent to schools of choice.

Request professors to send letters of recommendation.

December, senior year

Make sure that every law school has received your complete application. No one else will do it for you.

The first thing to do is to send a postcard or electronic inquiry to the schools you have selected asking for their bulletin and an application. Most law schools do not have these materials available until September, so this gives you ample opportunity to make the initial decision.

LSAT

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT), a half-day multiple choice objective test, is given in October, December, February, and June.

How well you do on the LSAT actually depends a great deal on how you do on standardized tests in general. If you are one of those people who does not excel in a timed, contrived situation, the LSAT may give you some trouble. General rules of thumb to follow, in addition to the usual maternal advice "get a good night's sleep the night before and don't worry too much about it," are:

Familiarize yourself as much as possible with the test before you actually take it. Sample LSATs can be ordered via LSAC.org. Students motivated to do as well on the LSAT should practice taking as many previously administered LSATs as possible. Practice often raises student scores significantly. Some students find professional prep courses helpful as well.

Relax. True, the LSAT often comprises a large part of your admission qualifications to law school, but unfortunately, your score does not improve proportionately with the amount of worry you put into the test.

Try to gauge your time effectively, so that you will complete as much of the test as possible without panicking.

There are commercial, very expensive (and in the view of many people, ridiculously overpriced) LSAT prep courses available.. There are also a number of self-training preparation books available in bookstores, which are probably a much better investment than the commercial courses.

The Powerscore Logic Games Bible (and also their Logical Reasoning Bible). Also some folks advise purchasing of a Penny Press or Dell Logic Games magazine on the newsstand, and simply working through their puzzles to attain a mastery of this sort of question.

It is a good idea to take the LSAT in the summer between your junior and senior years in college. This gives you plenty of time to get the results back so that you can develop a clear picture of where to apply, and also lets you know whether you should take the test again in the October or December sessions. Retake the LSAT if you have some definite reason to expect your score to rise (you didn't feel well during the first try, etc.). Each law school has its own way of looking at multiple LSAT scores: virtually all now will consider the highest, but will be more confident in the choice to do so if you can give them a good reason to distrust the first score. There is always a risk that one's score will go down on a second try. Most law schools seem to think that your score should improve from the first to the second testing because of increased familiarity with the test material and format so getting the same score may hurt you. Consider very carefully the retaking of the LSAT.

LSAC

LSAC's Credential Assembly Service (CAS) is basically a materials-coordinating service for law schools. The CAS distributes the following to law schools to which you apply: your LSAT score(s), a transcript summary (how many A's you have received, how many B's, etc., as well as your cumulative grade point average), biographical data, a copy of your transcript from the University of Delaware, letters of recommendation and evaluations.

Applications to law schools are very similar to the application you completed when you applied to colleges. One of the big differences, however, is that when a law school application gives you an instruction, they mean it. Colleges will put up with

Law schools have only two ways to look at you as a person instead of just another set of statistics: your personal essay and recommendations. You are sometimes asked to write in your essay about why you want to become a lawyer and what characteristics you believe would make you a good lawyer. mistakes in following directions; law schools won't. Some schools however, ask you to write about anything of interest to you. The essay should be prepared with great care as it will be judged for clarity of expression and general writing ability as well as for its content. Be honest; try to evaluate yourself objectively but don't go overboard bragging or criticizing yourself. Easier said than done, so just try to write a good clear essay that you feel emphasizes some aspects of you. It is a good idea to have an English professor read this over to find any writing errors.

Recommendations may count quite heavily or they may not count at all in the admission process; one never knows for sure how they will be viewed. It's better to be safe than sorry so try to get positive, detailed recommendations from the types of people the law schools request. If they request recommendations from the Dean or from professors, for instance, make sure that this is what you give them. If they simply say "recommendations" without other instructions, they mean recommendations from professors who have had you in class. Because the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 gives students access to previously confidential material, all students are asked to indicate in writing whether they waive their right of access to letters of recommendation. Law schools will tend to distrust letters to which access has not been waived. It is acceptable to have the same two or three professors send letters to all the schools to which you apply.

A small number of the law schools in the U.S. still require a Dean's letter of recommendation in addition to individual letters of recommendation from professors. At the University of Delaware, such dean's letters are sent by the Office of Student Life (in Hullihen Hall).